The Samsung Gear S3 series of smartwatches will receive the Tizen 3.0 update, industry insiders said earlier this week, citing reliable sources. The South Korean original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is reportedly already working on a new software package for the Gear S3 and is expected to distribute it around the time the recently announced Gear Sport and Gear Fit2 Pro wearables become commercially available. A more specific release window for Tizen 3.0 on the Gear S3 has yet to be revealed, though the latest information suggests that the software will be rolled out this fall.
Samsung Gear Fit2 wasn’t mentioned in the context of a Tizen 3.0 update and currently seems unlikely to receive it, though the Seoul-baed tech giant has yet to confirm that. The firmware itself will be distributed to owners of the Gear S3 devices as an over-the-air (OTA) update which will likely be released in stages and take several weeks to become available in all parts of the world. Originally introduced in 2016, the Gear S3 Frontier, Gear S3 Classic, and Gear Fit2 were touted as the then-latest step in Samsung efforts to create a comprehensive wearable ecosystem centered around the Tizen operating system. The devices themselves were met with a mostly positive response from both critics and consumers alike, offering a broad range of fitness tracking capabilities in durable packages with premium designs. The Gear S3 lineup ran Tizen 2.3.2 out of the box and has yet to be officially confirmed as being set to receive the Tizen 3.0 update which should debut some performance and stability improvements and additional features, many of which are focused on swimming.
The lack of robust swimming tracking capabilities is one of the main reasons why some industry watchers are speculating the Gear Fit2 won’t be updated to Tizen 3.0, with the wearable not having 5ATM-certified waterproofing, meaning it would be unlikely to significantly benefit from the newer iteration of Samsung’s operating system. The device itself may still receive a minor software update at some point in the future, industry sources said. Samsung’s recently unveiled Gear Sport and Gear Fit2 Pro both ship with Tizen 3.0 and are set to be commercially available later this year.